Who owns all the oranges?

By Oran Burke

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“You don’t subdue people by taking everything away at once. You chip away at things, slowly sculpting the system you want or need, or you control the flow of information so nobody realises the scope of what’s happening. That way, everyone gets used to each measure before you introduce the next.”
In 2030, a journalist tries to explain to his 17-year-old daughter how Britain has ended up being ruled by politicians reluctant to give up their self-anointed positions of power. The media is tightly controlled, 30,000 people are held in prison camps and private security forces carry out the brutal needs of the government. The majority of the population conform while struggling to get by in an economy which has never recovered from the financial meltdown of twenty years before.
As the conversation recounts more than three decades of changes, it’s clear their own family is not immune from the cruelty The Central Cabinet and their allies believe is necessary to maintain control and keep democracy’s replacement, The Stability System, in place.

“You don’t subdue people by taking everything away at once. You chip away at things, slowly sculpting the system you want or need, or you control the flow of information so nobody realises the scope of what’s happening. That way, everyone gets used to each measure before you introduce the next.”
In 2030, a journalist tries to explain to his 17-year-old daughter how Britain has ended up being ruled by politicians reluctant to give up their self-anointed positions of power. The media is tightly controlled, 30,000 people are held in prison camps and private security forces carry out the brutal needs of the government. The majority of the population conform while struggling to get by in an economy which has never recovered from the financial meltdown of twenty years before.
As the conver...

Oran Burke is an Irish writer who has spent most of his adult life in the UK. He is the author of Travels with Checkpoints, a travelogue, and Who owns all the oranges?, a dystopian tale of a Britain without democracy.